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November 23, 2010

Animated 3D models in Google Earth

A few readers have submitted links to us that show off animated 3D models in Google Earth. We have shown you some of them in the past (Tenerife Airport disaster, Disney Monorail), but the entire collection is bound to have something new for you.

Of particular note is the Roman villa at the Weilberg (KML). As the author states:

This is an interactive reconstruction of the Roman villa at the Weilberg. Take a deep breath and jump back in time. Back to the 2nd Century AD, when the Roman Empire covered most of Europe: The Pax Romana guaranteed peace and prosperity in the new provinces. Here, on the edge of the empire, wealthy Romans settled down. The estate with its impressive 150 m long facade is particularly known for its wine press. View the model in Google Earth, and choose your language in the upper right corner of the balloon texts.

You can view the entire collection of models in the 3D Warehouse, or browse them directly in Google Earth using this KML file.

What other cool animated models or tours have you found lately?

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November 22, 2010

Bring your models to life with iClone

For the next month, Reallusion (the makers of the excellent iClone rendering system) is running a contest to see who can do the best job of bringing their SketchUp models to life. Prizes include an Apple iPad and a Sony Cyber-shot camera.

So what is iClone? Their site says: "Real-time animation evolves with 3D Video FX, motion paths, HDR and rapid drag & drop creation inside iClone4. iClone4 combines real-time filmmaking & video production inside one powerful engine. The result is a streamlined production tool for motion graphics, 3D animation, video compositing and 3D stereo creation."

To explain a bit better, they've created this video that shows off some of the great stuff that you can do with it:

If you're interested in entering the contest, you have to produce a handful of items (YouTube video, images, etc) -- full details are on the Reallusion site. The deadline is December 15, so get to work!

(via Google SketchUp Blog)

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November 19, 2010

Explore the Hidden Treasures of Los Angeles

We've written about CyberCity 3D on this site quite a few times, as they're always trying new things using 3D buildings in Google Earth. Just in the last year or so, they've brought us "Virtual Viewing", some awesome buildings in Las Vegas and the popular 3dHawaii.com.

Now they've gone in another new direction by partnering with hidden los angeles to bring us HiddenLA3d.com, a slick 3D viewer to help you work your way through all of the great content on HLA.

By connecting with HLA's substantial Facebook Page (roughly 200,000 fans), they're really trying to bring Facebook to Google Earth, and it's a well-done implementation.

By clicking any of the white icons, you'll be taken of a "what lies beneath" page for that venue, showing more details about that location. In addition, they're working on adding "deals" to the site. For example, check out the nightlife page and notice the yellow Bevvy icons that are promoting some special offers. Online deals are a hot item right now, and combining that with Google Earth seems like a pretty cool integration.

For more head over to HiddenLA3d.com or read their press release below:

In a pioneering move linking 3D technology to social websites and Facebook, software innovator CyberCity 3D today announced it's partnering with one of Los Angeles' leading leisure and entertainment websites, hiddenlosangeles (hLA), to create hiddenla3d.com.

More than 198,900 members (and growing daily) now log on to hLA's on-line website and Facebook locations to learn about the unique activities, restaurants, landmarks, history, and adventures L.A. has to offer. HLA's Facebook page swelled to the point that founder Lynn Garrett spun off "foodie" and "event" pages to get a handle on the massive volumes of content. This overwhelming success- all generating from hLA's website and blog launch in early 2009.

Garrett's now taking hLA's organic evolution even deeper-- by giving her online 'family' a cool group of interactive 3D maps through CyberCity 3D on hiddenla3d.com. This new site organizes hidden los angeles™-generated content onto maps-- which makes finding recommended 'hidden' places, activities, and related 'deals' easier. It will also boost Garrett's hLA community's ability to 'embrace the depth beneath the shallow'.

"CyberCity 3D's amazing and easy-to-use technology will be a tremendous advantage for our fans, so hidden los angeles™ is diving in- in 3D," says Garrett.

Hiddenla3d.com wades hLA Facebook™ and website fans into the pool of awesome activities and places the metropolis has to offer by inviting them to browse hidden LA's posted locations on a 3D map through the Google™ Maps and Google™ Earth™ API plug-in. Visitors can explore a clear, multi-view landscape of the numerous places hLA endorses-- all before leaving the house.

"The immense popularity of the hidden los angeles™ Facebook™ page is indicative of how fast the social web economy is growing. Extending this site with 3D social maps is a fresh way to give the hLA community an even richer experience when exploring and learning about all of the unusual spots L.A. has to offer," states Kevin DeVito, CEO of CyberCity 3D, Inc.

Don't visit hidden LA to find tourist traps and well-traveled scenes. (And don't bother to drop by unless you love L.A.).

"Visit us for those tucked-away spots that make up the heart of Los Angeles. Places like The Museum of Jurassic Technology, the L.A. River Tour, and Trapeze School," explains Garrett. "Not your usual haunts for sure- but definitely the perfect place to open the door to fun, out-of-the way recommendations."

With hiddenla3d.com, the City of Angels got a little less megalopolis-- and a lot more fun and easy to explore.

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November 18, 2010

Google releases a lot more Street View imagery in Germany

A few weeks ago, amid a good bit of controversy, Google finally released Street View in Germany. It was a well-publicized release, largely due to the thousands of blurred houses, but it only covered tiny sections of a few cities. Now that has changed.

While it's still not the solid coverage like we see in the US or the UK, the coverage has just been expanded quite a bit, now covering 20 cities in Germany.

[UPDATE: The official post from Google is up.]

I haven't seen an official list of updated cities yet, but it seems to include Bielefeld, Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Dusseldorf, Dresden. Hamburg, Hannover, Koln (Cologne), Leipzig, Mannheim, Munchen (Munich), Nurnberg, Stuttgart and Wuppertal.

If you're not familiar with using Street View in Google Earth, check out this great tutorial that Frank created last year.

Have you noticed new Street View imagery in any other cities/countries? Leave a comment and let us know!

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Three new 3D cities released on Japan

It's been a while since Google has officially released a 3D city (though new buildings are added weekly), so it was nice to see them add three more -- Yokohama, Sendai and Saitama, Japan.

The cities each feature thousands of buildings, and look excellent!

As they often do, Google has produced a nice little video to show off the highlights in the new cities, so check it out here:

To see them for yourself, here are some KML files that will fly you directly to each city: YokohamaSendai.kmlSaitama.kml

For more, check out the full entry on the Google Lat Long Blog.

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November 17, 2010

Earth As Art

Last night we showed you some of the fresh new imagery that Google released, and we're still digging to find other areas that are new, but today we've got something a bit different.

Wired Magazine points us to the USGS "Earth as Art" collection. The images are taken by the Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites, with false color produced by satellite sensors. As Wired says, "the result is stunning". Here are a few examples:

The USGS collection has a ton of images in it, and Wired has picked out some of their favorites.

Out of all of the USGS images, which one do you like best? Leave a comment and let us know.

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November 16, 2010

New Google Earth Imagery - November 16

As pointed out by GEB readers 'Munden' and 'Steven', Google has just pushed out some fresh new imagery!

As is usually the case, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn't in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what's new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they're not identical, that means that you've found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!

[UPDATED -- 17-November, 3:01pm EST]

• Argentina: Buenos Aires -- thanks 'Daniel'
• Austria: Vienna -- thanks 'Joeran'
• Canada: Saskatchewan -- thanks 'Steven'
• China: Various areas -- thanks 'Munden'
• Faroe Islands: -- thanks 'Munden'
• France: Bretagne -- thanks 'Martin'
• Indonesia: Southern part of Jakarta -- thanks 'okasbali'
• Romania: Timisoara -- thanks 'twist3r'
• Russia: Losino-Petrovsky, Lugovaya, Mendeleyevo, Monino and Povarovo -- thanks 'Munden'
• United States: Georgia (Augusta), Indiana (Evansville), Louisiana (Baton Rouge), New Jersey (Trenton), North Carolina (Wilmington), South Carolina (Charleston, Columbia), Texas (Fort Hood), Wisconsin (Madison) -- thanks 'Dan', 'McMaster_de', 'Munden', 'Scott' and 'Steven'

If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!

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Geography Awareness Week

This week is National Geographic's "Geography Awareness Week", which we've highlighted a few times in the past (2007, 2008).

This year's theme is "Freshwater!", highlighting the importance of our relationship with water. In particular, they emphasize that less than 1% of the world's water is available for human use. Here's a video that shows what this year's week is all about:

While they didn't create any Google Earth Tours as they have in the past, there are still a few resources that you may find interesting.

Where's That Water? A quiz that features GeoEye imagery, asking you to identify the body of water based off of just a satellite image. Here is an example from last year.

The Geospatial Revoluation They're highlighting the excellent videos being produced by Penn State Public Broadcasting, which we've also shown on our site (episode one, episode two). In addition, they encourage you to check out the educator resources that PSPB is offering.

Water - Our Thirsty World They're offering a free interactive magazine that you can download. Included are some neat features such as animated maps and timelines.

While I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of Google Earth-specific resources, they really do have a lot of great content on their site. Check out www.GeographyAwarenessWeek.org to see everything they have to offer.

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November 15, 2010

360 Panoramas Now Part of Google Earth Photos Layer

Frank Taylor reporting from New Zealand:
Google has upgraded the Photos layer in Google Earth to not only include the millions of geo-tagged photos from Panoramio, but also to include 360 degree panoramas from 360cities.net. The 360 photos were previously viewable in Google Earth if you opened the Gallery layer folder and turned on the 360Cities layer. But, now everyone can find the panoramas with the default Photos layer. The regular 2D photos still appear as little blue icons as you zoom into a place. Now, if 360 panorama photos are available for that place, you will also see little red square icons as well. Click on a red icon and you're presented with a 2D view of that location in the pop-up window and you can click the photo to fly into the 360 panorama right in Google Earth.

I'm a big fan of 360 panoramas which give you a full immersive experience of a photo location - you can look in all directions, including up and down. During our first year of the Tahina Expedition I have produced many 360 panoramas of places in the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, Galapagos, the French Marquesas, Bora Bora, Tonga, and more (see recent 360s of Tonga, see all of the panoramas for Tahina Expedition). Now everyone can find 360 photos like these, and those done by thousands of photographers around the world right in the Photos layer.

I'm thrilled to see 360 panoramas, and 360Cities.net, get more visibility. Jeffrey Martin, who started 360Cities, says that there are more than 60 thousand 360 images in the new Google Earth layer. Congratulations Jeffrey! Kudos to Google for making these photos more accessible! I hope they'll take the next step and add them to the Photos layer in Google Maps as well.

See LatLong blog post about the layer changes.

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November 12, 2010

Using SketchUp to model interiors

3D models in Google Earth have been getting better and better every week, but one key area always remains unfinished -- the inside. Modeler 'PeterG' has finished modeling the inside of the Leku Chillida Museum and it looks amazing!

The building has just been updated in the main "3D Buildings" layer, and you can fly to it using this KML file.

Here is a quick video tour that he created to show it all off:

This is only possible because of an often-overlooked feature in Google Earth 5.2 -- improved camera clipping. Prior to 5.2, you couldn't zoom in very close to an object or it would disappear from view, so trying to browse around an interior like this would have been virtually impossible. Now with the improved clipping, it works great!

It's even better when you browse around outside. Nearby buildings are accurately rendered, along with trees, bushes, benches and all kinds of items. It gives the whole area an amazingly realistic feel.

His blog (written in Spanish) can be found at gipuzkoa3d.blogspot.com.

Great work!

UPDATE: For those of you having trouble navigating inside the building, Peter has built this KMZ tour
, which should be helpful for you.

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November 11, 2010

US Navy Fleet Week in Google Earth

Back in October, Chris Yonge of Studio Cruz and Christiaan Adams created a very cool Google Earth Tour for the San Francisco Fleet Week. The tour includes a voice overlay, images, video and more, all in one nice package.

To view the tour, you can download this KMZ file or simply watch the YouTube video below:

Because of the complexity of the tour, Chris and Chritiaan wrote up the following information on how they came up with the idea for the Tour, as well as how they were able to put it together technically. Hopefully this information is helpful if you plan to build a similar Tour for a project of your own.

This project emerged from a desire to help Fleet Week 2010 showcase its mission using a 3D animated tour in Google Earth.  Studio Cruz was recommended by the Google Earth team, and was chosen as the developer, after having produced other successful Google Earth tours, including one for Potter Drilling of Redwood City, CA in 2009, which was showcased at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.  Studio Cruz worked with the Fleet Week organizers to create the seven minute tour in advance of the Navy and Marines' Fleet Week celebration in early October 2010.  The timescale was tight - only five weeks - but since no complex coding was involved it was judged possible.

The tour had three goals: to introduce the concept of Fleet Week to the public, to explain the serious purpose behind the public events (liaison between Navy and civilian disaster relief specialists), and to provide a brief history of the US Navy's disaster relief work in the SF area and around the world. The script directed that the tour be graphics intensive, including four YouTube videos, interactive balloons, screen overlay animation, a live link to an existing online KMZ history of Bay Area earthquakes on a USGS site, and precisely synchronized professional narration.

Studio Cruz began work on the tour in early September. The YouTube videos were downloaded as Flash videos using RealPlayer, trimmed to the relevant sections using Moyea FLV Editor, then uploaded as new videos ready for embedding into the relevant parts of the tour. The script was split into 45 sections of between one and three sentences, and placeholder MP3s were created in the studio. These were later replaced by the professional narration. Photographs provided by the Navy were cropped and resaved as JPGs, and screen/ground overlays were built in Photoshop and saved out as 24-bit PNG files.

Building the tour took slightly over a week, with coding and graphics being made by Chris Yonge, principal of Studio Cruz. Since Google intended the tour to be revised and reused for future Fleet Weeks the KML code was extensively commented, down to the words spoken in each piece of narration. After the build stage, the placeholder narration audio files were replaced with the final professional versions. This required minor timing adjustments throughout the tour, but once that was done the tour was delivered and posted.

Google also wanted a video version of the tour for visitors to the Fleet Week site who did not have Google Earth. For clarity and quality this was done using the screen capture program Camtasia; the resulting AVI files were assembled in AfterEffects and adjusted. However, some parts of the tour did not capture well: in particular the slowdown caused by Camtasia operating in the background meant there was an unacceptable pause before the YouTube videos started. The decision was made, a few days before the deadline, to rewrite the tour specifically for the video capture. Animation, video, narration, and interactive balloons were removed from the KML file. The reduced tour was run and captured as a video in Camtasia, and the resulting files imported into AfterEffects. The removed items were then replaced as individual layers, resulting in much higher quality. The raw animation was around 14 Gb, which was compressed to 700 Mb for uploading to YouTube. It can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le5GqmV6ASg.

Both the tour and video were completed on time and to budget. The video alone had over nine thousand views the first weekend. Studio Cruz can be found at www.studiocruz.com.

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November 10, 2010

An excellent flight simulator for Google Earth

Back in 2006, Frank showed you how you could sort of use Google Earth as a flight simulator. It was crude, but effective. In late 2007, Google put a more realistic flight simulator into Google Earth, but kept it hidden as a secret mode.

More recently, this February we saw a demo of GEVision, which integrates Microsoft Flight Sim technology but uses Google Earth for the terrain and imagery.

Now we have our first look at Xavier Tassin's Google Earth Flight Simulator, which might be the best one yet!

It uses the Google Earth Plug-in, and you can try it for yourself at gefs-online.com. If you need help with the controls, here are some instructions.

A few other notes about the project, from Xavier:

• I have been playing around with Flight Sims since MS Flight Simulator 1.0 (I was 6 at that time :)
• 6 years ago, I had a first try at making an Online Flight Simulator (www.keynoise.com) as a commercial for an Australian acquaintance of mine who is selling the Evektor Sportstar down under. This Sim was build with Shockwave and got more success than just being a commercial. Sadly, technical limitations and lack of time stopped my progress into making something better.
• 6 month ago I tried "Ships" from PlanetAction, and realized that the GE plug-in would be a great platform for making my dream come true: make a worldwide scenery Flight Simulator.
• The biggest challenge into making GE Flight Simulator was to work around the lack of a 3D physics engine in Javascript: it took me some time but I finally made my own. Also, as Google Earth is not really meant to be a game platform, it is difficult (and requires a lot of maths!) to animate complex objects. But all in all I was really surprised by the performances I could get out of the plug-in.
• For the beta version, I tried to integrate as many of the features I though to be important to make it fun. It is not perfect yet but it gives a good idea of what can be achieve with a bit of Javascript and the GE plug-in. I am especially excited about the multi-player mode and I would like to get some feedback from users on that.
• For the Future, I am planning to add more planes, improve the flight models, add an airport database and some aeronautical charting, improve the multi-player feature. I also would like (if enough interest is shown) to open an aircraft marketplace to everyone.

All in all, it's a great flight sim. Try it for yourself, and tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

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November 9, 2010

The state of the Berlin Wall, 21 years later

It was exactly 21 years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell. In honor of that anniversary, Virtual Berlin has released a very impressive and comprehensive "3D Virtual City Model" using the Google Earth Plug-in.

It allows you to view a ton of data about the wall, including some great comparisons between 1989 and today. They use 3D models, historical imagery, and a variety of other tools to make it incredibly feature-rich.

To view the city, simply visit their site and browse around.

Some additional information about the project, in their own words:

Where exactly did the Berlin Wall stand? Where were the checkpoints? Are any parts of the Berlin Wall left standing, and if so, where are they?

These are some of the questions asked by anyone interested in the most recent history of Berlin. The answers are provided by the official 3D virtual city model published by the Land of Berlin, which documents the exact course of the entire Berlin Wall.

The model shows the buildings currently standing in Berlin, highlighting the former course of the Wall through the city. It shows the high wall constituting the outside (Western) part of the Berlin Wall (Vorderlandmauer) and the low wall behind it to the East (Hinterlandmauer) as well as the border strip. The Brandenburg Gate is the starting point for a virtual 3D flight over Berlin that users can themselves direct. The menu allows users to locate fragments of the Berlin Wall and the former checkpoints. The documentation centers in Berlin and memorials are shown, as is the "Berlin Wall Historical Mile" and memorial sites designed by artists. Specially marked sites of the 3D presentation have been linked to further-reaching information.

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Finding a lost family with Google Earth

A neat story from British Columbia yesterday; a family was hiking on Mount Tzouhalem this past Sunday when they got lost in the dark on their way back down the mountain. When calling for help, they described the area around them (fences, horses, etc). One of the search managers started up Google Earth, found an area that matched their description, and helped lead to their rescue!

As you can see in the image below, the mountain is in relatively high-resolution in Google Earth, which helped make this possible:

If you want to check out the mountain for yourself, you can fly there using this KML file. For more info, check out the full story on BCLocalNews.com.

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November 8, 2010

Movember Earth

Invented in 1999 by a group of Australians, the Movember Foundation fights to raise awareness and funds for a variety of men's health issues, such as prostate cancer. The word "Movember" is a combination of "Moustache" and "November"; growing a moustache during November is essentially the trademark symbol of the group.

GEB reader 'Damien' is a participant in the event, and decide to help give it a bit of promotion. Similar to our Halloween tradition of turning Google Earth into a pumpkin, Damien turned the earth in a giant smiley face with a moustache!

You can download the model from the Google 3D Warehouse or download the KML directly.

You can learn more about the Movember Foundation at movember.com.

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November 5, 2010

Bing Maps is dropping their 3D version

Over the years, we've covered a variety of news stories about Bing Maps (formerly known as "Virtual Earth"). In particular, we were impressed with their "Version 2" cities that included thousands of trees, and the 3D Clouds that they auto-generated based on the weather.

An an example, here is the Orange Bowl in Miami; notice the 3D trees all around the stadium, in the neighborhood behind it, etc:

Sadly, Microsoft has announced that they'll be removing the 3D maps layer entirely, and focusing more on their Bird's Eye imagery and other technologies. In addition to removing the 3D layer, they're also making the Bird's Eye imagery available without the need for users to download the Silverlight plugin, making it more easily accessible to more users.

One other nice thing they're doing is preserving 3D building links by automatically redirecting users to the closest approximation of the 3D building they were looking for. As CNET says:

To make sure the removal of 3D doesn't litter the Web with a bunch of non-working URLs, the company is changing every map link, map tour, and desktop shortcut to simply direct users to whatever part of the map the 3D version had been pointing to. Buildings that had been 3D models before will also become pushpin locations.

It's hard to say exactly why they're dropping 3D support, though it's clear that they've not added anything to it in quite a while. After launching a handful of their "Version 2" cities back in 2008, I was anxious to see more but nothing else was ever released. I even contacted them a few times about it and got no response.

Part of the problem may have been that developers simply used Google Earth/Maps much more heavily than Bing Maps, and now Microsoft is retooling to approach things from a different angle. Microsoft didn't support KML for quite a while, which probably kept more people tied into Google Earth -- that's certainly what happened to me.

In any case, it'll be interesting to see where things go from here, as Microsoft is certainly doing some neat things. For example, this TED Talk that they gave in February showed off some very slick integration of their various products.

What do you think is the reason they're dropping 3D support? Did you ever use it or develop anything for it? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this.

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November 4, 2010

Using Maps to Lie

A few days ago, "Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze" had a great post about the size of the crowd at Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity".

It seems that conservatives have been passing around an image that shows Glenn Beck's rally with a much larger crowd, but the images were taken from slightly different viewpoints to make thing look different than they actually were. He uses some great images (with overhead maps) to show that the rallies were roughly the same size.

You'll want to read his full post to see how he put it all together, but it makes sense.

The reason I bring this up is because GeoEye just released a beautiful high-res image of the crowd that day. While it doesn't definitively answer the question of which rally was larger (and I'd rather avoid the politics of determining that), it certainly shows quite a huge crowd at Stewart's rally:

To view it in Google Earth, I've taken the high-res version of the image and created an image overlay for it. Download that file and you can zoom down pretty close to check it out.

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November 3, 2010

New Google Earth Imagery - November 3

As pointed out by GEB reader 'robbie', Google has just pushed out some fresh new imagery!

As is usually the case, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn't in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what's new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they're not identical, that means that you've found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!

[UPDATED -- 3-November, 8:23pm EST]

• Argentina: Various areas -- thanks 'Federico'
• Cameroon: Various, including east of Bafoussam -- thanks 'Munden'
• Ireland: Various cities -- thanks 'robbie'
• Russia: west Kurgan region, east Chelyabinsk region -- thanks 'workdao'
• Ukraine: Various -- thanks 'Chogory'
• United States: Illinois (Springfield), Iowa (Cedar Rapids, Marion), Maryland (Baltimore), Missouri (Saint Joseph) and New York (Long Island -- thanks 'Belmaktor', 'Brent', 'ChrisK' and 'Munden'
• Uruguay: Some imagery in the center of the country -- thanks 'Roberto'

If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!

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Visualize your GPS tracks with Breadcrumbs

The "visualize your GPS track using Google Earth" field is becoming more crowded, but competition usually leads to better results, and Breadcrumbs seems to be a good example of that.

We've discussed a variety of similar sites in the past, such as @trip and Wikiloc, and Breadcrumbs is quite similar on the surface. However, their interface is top-notch, and they do some neat things with your data.

Here is a video that shows what it can do:

Here's what they have to say about it:

Breadcrumbs is a cutting edge GPS track management application that allows users to visualize (in 3D), organize, edit and share their GPS data and associated photos/videos. Breadcrumbs takes your average desktop GPS management application to the web.

Our users can log their ski trip, hiking trip or sightseeing trip, upload it to Breadcrumbs with their photos and videos, and send it to all their friends, who can relive the adventure in 3D. And this is only the start, as we plan to provide our users with a platform to not only edit and maintain tracks, but also to find new places to explore and interact within a social network.

Why did we start Breadcrumbs?
When I first bought my Garmin Etrex and started tracking our snowboarding runs I was really disappointed with the software Garmin delivered. I ended up using Google Earth to visualize our tracks due to its realistic representations. I then wondered how to attach my photos and videos (I had a helmet camera)? The only solutions available were long-winded and technical. Another problem that I encountered was that there was no easy way to share my adventures with friends and family.

I partnered with my friend Christoph and we decided to take the problems into our own hands, and Breadcrumbs was born.

Who are we?
Christoph and I are two outdoor fanatics that moved from the UK and Austria, respectively, to Vancouver, where we met. As mentioned we devised Breadcrumbs after one of our many snowboarding trips. Using my consultancy experience in GIS and spatial development, and Christoph's social web application background we started to work on Breadcrumbs in our free time, and that brought us to where we are today.

Features
Breadcrumbs is the first web application of its kind, where users can manage GPS tracks, photos and videos in one place - it can be thought of as 'Flickr for GPS tracks'.

The key features of Breadcrumbs include:
Relive your adventure: Breadcrumbs brings together photos, videos and GPS tracks in one quick and easy process and our 3D playback function brings the track alive. Edit and manage: Breadcrumbs comes with a suite of tools which let users edit and manage their GPS tracks, photos and videos. These include:
- Automated geotagging of photos.
- Track editing tool to correct GPS points.
- Add information to your adventure to help tell the story, such as show where you ate your lunch or spotted some wildlife.
- Organize: Breadcrumbs offers a rich set of tools to help users to manage adventures.
- Share: Breadcrumbs makes it easy to share adventures, with options including a public page for each track and direct integration with Facebook.

Finally we want to emphasize that we want to be an open platform and want to reach out to developers to integrate with Breadcrumbs through our API. We are already integrated with one smartphone application allowing the user to push their tracks directly to Breadcrumbs from their phone.

With all of the choices out there, you've got a lot to choose from. I typically use Garmin Connect, simply because data from my GPS watch (for running) is automatically uploaded there. However, I'll be pushing some of the data over to Breadcrumbs now to see how well it works.

I asked the Breadcrumbs folks specifically about how their product compares to Garmin Connect, and here's what they had to say:

Our main focus is allowing the user to relive their adventure not just through the GPS track as Garmin does, but also by combining photos and videos with the GPS track. We think there is a huge amount of value in placing those photos and videos on the map and Breadcrumbs' automated geotagging process makes it easy for the user.

Our utilization and heavy integration with the Google Earth plugin is also a big bonus for the user. Garmin allows you to look at your data in Google Maps and indeed Google Earth. However, Breadcrumbs builds on this as we have built a track playback feature on top of the plugin which allows you to hit play and replay your trip step by step. It's like watching a movie of your day out! This really does bring the users' GPS data to life especially when sharing with friends and family.

We are an open platform. We have created an API so anyone can plug into Breadcrumbs and start pushing data to our application. We already have one smartphone developer on board, all he did was add a 'Go Breadcrumbs' button to his tracking application and using our API pushes the data to the users' Breadcrumbs account. Garmin Connect is a closed platform, only providing smarthphone support through GPX.

To show you a bit more about how it works, they've created a tour to guide you through the software, which is a great way to get started with it.

With all of that being said, what GPS track software do you prefer?

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Posted by mickmel at 7:15 AM | Comments (3)

November 2, 2010

Geospatial Revolution: Episode Two Released

We first told you about the Geospatial Revolution project back in July, and posted Episode One in late September.

Today, right on time, Penn State Public Broadcasting has released Episode Two. As with the first episode, the quality with which is was produced is stunningly good. They've done an amazing job with these.

This episode covers three major topics, all related to companies and communities using geospatial technologies to improve what they do:

1 - City of Portland: How they use tools such as Portland Maps to improve the city and plan for the future.
2 - UPS: I've always known that UPS uses this kind of technology quite heavily, but this gave excellent insight into some of the ways they use it.
3 - Philadelphia Food Trust: How Philadelphia used geospatial technology to find the greatest underserved communities and help get grocery stores to open in those areas to help serve those people.

Enjoy the video, and look for Episode Three on March 1, 2011.

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Posted by mickmel at 8:50 AM | Comments (2)

Street View finally launches in Germany

Despite hundreds of thousands of Germans opting out of Street View (and subsequently having their homes blurred), the service has finally launched in a few small corners of Germany.

The first place discovered with coverage is the small town of Oberstaufen, which welcomed Google with baked goods when they came to town.

Other places with some coverage include Berlin, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Munich, Gelsenkirchen and Dortmund, though it's mostly just stadiums and small sections in the center of each city. Google Maps Mania has a nice list of some of those venues.

If you're not familiar with using Street View in Google Earth, check out this great tutorial that Frank created last year.

If you notice any updated areas outside of Germany, please leave a comment and let us know.

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Posted by mickmel at 8:07 AM | Comments (14)

November 1, 2010

Cycling the Alps with Google Earth

Using Google Earth to visualize real-life experiences is becoming a more and more popular idea. As the imagery in Google Earth continues to improve, these experiences become even better.

The latest example of that comes to us from CyclingTheAlps.com. They have built hundreds of Google Earth tours of various cycling routes in the Alps, augmented with photos and videos for many of them. Here is a snapshot from one of the tours:

To learn more, here is a brief video overview of how their site works:

To try it for yourself, just head over to their site and dive in. Right-click on any pass and choose "3D Tour" to watch a tour of it in Google Earth, or you can jump directly to the col de liseran tour to see it in action.

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Posted by mickmel at 8:36 AM | Comments (4)